The website and blog of historian Chris Gehrz

Hear Me Speak on WWI Commemoration

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be speaking at the University of Minnesota’s Rochester campus on Tuesday night, April 22nd as part of the UMR Connectslecture series, free and open to the public. That month the series will focus on “Wars and Conflicts,” so I was invited to give a talk on World War I (this year is its centenary).

Here are the details of my talk (which covers a topic familiar to long-time readers of this blog), in case you live in southern Minnesota or want to make a relatively short drive down from the Cities — or up from northern Iowa, or over from western Wisconsin… well, you get the idea:

“Lest We Forget”: The Commemoration of World War I from Minnesota to the Western Front

One hundred years ago this August, Europe descended into a war that would take the lives of over nine million soldiers, including 2 million Germans, 1.8 million Russians, and over 2,000 Minnesotans. Even before the guns fell silent in November 1918, people around the world struggled for appropriate ways to commemorate a war like no other. Should memorials be patriotic or personal? Religious or secular? Grand or intimate? And who would make those decisions? In this talk, we’ll visit a wide array of memorials, stretching from Minneapolis to Munich, and consider the enduring challenge and importance of war remembrance.

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